THE Global Justice Movement Website

Tuesday, October 31, 2017

We’re still
reeling in disbelief here at CESJ global headquarters . . . and we’re almost
out of fish line.And as for the pole .
. . well, we’re talking to him next week, and we’ll see what he has to say.But enough of bad fake Marx Brothers jokes.On to the point of today’s Horror Special . .
. the wage system!

Monday, October 30, 2017

A week or so ago
in a posting on how to make tax reform even worse, we noted that when the State
starts to take over more and more control over people’s lives, not only the
State becomes overburdened with duties, but the citizens become overburdened
with taxes.Somebody, after all, has to
pay for such things, such as universal basic incomes; money just doesn’t appear
out of nowhere.

Friday, October 27, 2017

The Just Third Way
continues to make steady progress.Interestingly, more and more of the postings on this blog are getting “shared”
and “liked” than ever before on FaceBook, and at least one individual has
requested a formatted version of a blog for use in a class lecture.He was having trouble downloading for some
reason, so we made a special version in .pdf.By the way, if you want to use a posting in a class or something, go
ahead and print out as many as you want, just give us credit so that people
will know where you got it (and if you’re quoting, don’t change any words
except to correct spelling or grammar errors):

Thursday, October 26, 2017

It’s gotten so
predictable that we forgot to predict it.We kept telling people that binary economics and the Just Third Way are
based on something called “the Banking Principle.”As we’ve repeated ad nauseam, the Banking Principle is that the amount of money in
the system depends on the velocity of money, the price level, and the number of
transactions, not the other way around.

Wednesday, October 25, 2017

As all good
Keynesians, neo and otherwise, learn in Economics 101, there is a tradeoff
between employment and inflation.The
theory is that if you want low inflation, you’ll have to put up with high
unemployment, and if you want low unemployment, you’ll have to accept
inflation.

Tuesday, October 24, 2017

If you read
yesterday’s blog posting, you know that Say’s Law of Markets and money creation
go together.In a very real sense,
production is money, and money is production . . . if the system is arranged
the right way.“Money” — defined as
anything that can be accepted in settlement of a debt (“all things transferred
in commerce”) — is the means by which I exchange what I produce, for what you
produce, so that every producer is a consumer, and every consumer is a producer;
supply and demand are in balance.That
is why money is usually defined as “the medium of exchange.”

Monday, October 23, 2017

. . . instead of
making people work for profits.Which,
frankly, is a bad way of putting it, for there is no reason to work at all if
there is no profit in it.What we mean
(after titling this blog in a way we hope will catch your eye and keep you
glued to the screen), is that — consistent with Say’s Law of Markets —
production and consumption should be in balance.

Friday, October 20, 2017

A number of
projects have made great progress over the past week, from the proposed re-launch
of The Just Third Way Hour to the
final editing and review of Red Star Over
Bethlehem.Perhaps it won’t be too
much longer before world leaders start catching on to the fact that there is a
viable alternative to the sad condition of today’s society:

Thursday, October 19, 2017

All the recent
talk about tax reform, good, better, and worst, has focused on the debate as to
which philosophy of taxation, and which specific tweaks to the existing system,
will best stimulate an acceptable rate of economic growth.Commentary has ranged from the sublime to the
ridiculous, with the usual barrage of inane and erudite remarks, interspersed
with more or less veiled attacks on the intelligence, motives, and fashion
sense of anyone on the other side, but no one has raised the real issue here:

Wednesday, October 18, 2017

Secessionism,
according to a piece in the Wall Street
Journal yesterday (“Secessionism’s Dangerous Return,” 10/17/17, A15), is big,
it’s bad, and it’s back.The way things
are going, it’s 1914 all over again, with the big powers and little people
squaring off for a final showdown.As
the author, Walter Russell Mead, a fellow of the Hudson Institute and Professor
of Foreign Affairs at Bard College, opines,

Tuesday, October 17, 2017

Both the Wall Street Journal and the Washington Post commented on Austria’s
recent election that there was a shift to the right.Both papers cited gains by the “Freedom
Party,” Freiheitliche Partei Österreichs, founded in 1956 as a right-wing
populist and national-conservative political party originally led by a former National
Socialist and SS officer opposed to socialism and Catholic “clericalism.”The party’s advance to the number two spot in
the number of seats in the legislature is attributed to growing sentiment
against immigrants.

Monday, October 16, 2017

Last week we came
across an
article on the Mondragon Cooperatives in Spain.And what are the Mondragon Cooperatives, you
ask?(People who are not familiar with
them tend to get blank looks, even outrage, when they admit they never heard of
them so we’ll spare you the humiliation if you don’t know.And the sense of superiority if you do. . .
.)

Friday, October 13, 2017

Yet another week
filled with outreach and information.The Big Event this week, of course, has been the National Cooperative
Business Association Conference, with a number of CESJ representatives
interacting with some of the “higher ups” in the organization and discussing
the complementarity of the Just Third Way and the coop movement.There have been a few other things, as well:

Thursday, October 12, 2017

With so many
members of the CESJ core group in town who knew and worked with Don Alberto Martén Chavarría, founder of the solidarity movement
in Costa Rica, we thought we’d let people know a little bit more about it,
especially as it provides a core organization that might provide a core
organization around which to put together the rebuilding of the entire region.There can obviously be improvements to make
it more consistent with the Just Third Way, but the solidarity movement is a
great advance over previous arrangements:

Wednesday, October 11, 2017

It’s unverified
(by us), but we’ve heard that the “Jones Act Waiver” for Puerto Rico is going
to expire and won’t be renewed.And
what, exactly, does that mean?The “Jones
Act,” which dates from the 1920s, stipulates that cargoes going from one U.S.
Port to another must be carried on U.S. flag vessels.This presumably helps the struggling U.S.
Merchant Marine by providing employment . . . and greatly increases prices in
Puerto Rico. . . .

Tuesday, October 10, 2017

What with
everything else that has happened, Puerto Rico seems to have disappeared from
public attention . . . that is, until people start wondering how to rebuild
without bankrupting the rest of the United States.Oddly enough, a possible program for rebuilding
that will make money instead of costing money is ready to hand, and only needs
to be implemented.Today we look at the
second part of President Ronald Reagan’s speech to the Presidential Task Force
on Project Economic Justice that presented the plan. This is a follow-up to the extract from the
strategy paper, “Project
Economic Justice: A Beachhead for Regional Infrastructural Reform,” which led
up to the work of the Task Force. For
those interested in seeing and hearing rather than (or in addition to) reading,
here is the video of the speech:

Monday, October 9, 2017

Today we post the
first half of President Ronald Reagan’s speech to the Presidential Task Force
on Project Economic Justice on August 3, 1987.This is a follow-up to the extract from the strategy paper, “Project
Economic Justice: A Beachhead for Regional Infrastructural Reform,” which led
up to the work of the Task Force. For
those interested in seeing and hearing rather than reading, here is the video
of the speech:

Friday, October 6, 2017

Things continue to
move forward on the expanded ownership front, although the powers-that-be don’t
seem to have glommed on to the potential of the Just Third Way for solving a
rather large number of problems that otherwise seem insoluble.Perhaps if those of you reading this would
send the links for the Project Economic Justice strategy paper extract or the
text of President Reagan’s speech to a politician or two, we might see some
action. . . . In the meantime: